[3830] RTTY Roundup P49X(W0YK) Single Op HP
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Mon Jan 9 16:09:19 EST 2006
ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: P49X
Operator(s): W0YK
Station: P49X
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Aruba
Operating Time (hrs): 23:58
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 206
40: 651
20: 975
15: 708
10: 0
------------
Total: 2540 State/Prov = 57 Countries = 64 Total Score = 307,340
Club:
Comments:
This was a blast ... never a dull moment. The calls just kept coming. Is there
anyone left who is NOT on RTTY these days? Of course having the country to
myself and being located in a superb location was a wonderful opportunity.
Jacky, P43P, has been busy with work and family and just wasn't able to get
prepared and devote the weekend to the contest this year. My sincere thanks to
all of you who called in, many on four bands. The growing community of RTTY
contesters is what makes this all work. The thought occured to me several times
during the weekend, "What if all these stations calling me just didn't show up?"
Would have been lonely down here in Aruba.
I arrived on Monday and spent the week reconfiguring the station for RTTY and
working out the inevitable problems that come up. I only worked about 600
stations on 80-10 RTTY as a means of checking out the station. I had planned to
do some WARC and 160 RTTY prior to the contest, but that had to be postponed
until the Monday/Tuesday following. I brought three identical wireless laptops
down here, one each for the two rigs and one for email/Internet and as a
back-up. (If you plan for a back-up, you'll never need it.) Well, the
computers couldn't see each other's file system over the network. Small
baffling issue with XP permissions and other security delights. That took a day
to stumble through. Then, there was hum on my headphone audio and RFI between
the rigs on some band combinations. The band pass filtering and coax stubs
didn't seem to have any positive or negative effect on this particular problem.
I got everything solved except the RFI and apparently the signals were strong
enough to overcome it in most cases. At least I had plenty of stations I could
hear and work.
Last year my first hour rate was 161, so when I fumbled through the first hour
on Saturday with 140, it didn't look good. But, I quickly found my feet and got
centered into the motions of playing the two keyboards no matter what was thrown
at me. Occassionally I'd get myself (somewhat comicly, I must say) confused and
gridlocked with the operator on the other side of the QSO wondering what was
going on. And, unlike last year and most contests the rate really didn't drop
off much. I was at 1341 when I knocked off at 04Z (1am local) and got nearly
that much more on Sunday. There was a lull about three hours before the end and
I figured it was all over. That only lasted a few minutes before I was once
again struggling to keep up with the incoming stream of callers.
I never moved the bandswitch to 10 meters although I'm sure there was some
minimal propagation from this location. But, I would only have lost ground by
leaving 15 or 20 which were always producing high rates. An incremental mult
was worth 21-22 contacts. And I was in the enviable position of being the sole
station available for the P4 mult, so many came to me, even if they were rare
themselves. Still, I missed a lot of mults. I heard some deep Russians, and I
know a number of Oceanic and Asian mults I could have gotten, but didn't want to
break either of my parallel runs to chase them.
I used two 756ProII's this year and they are wonderful RTTY radios, although it
was the first time I had seen or operated them. Each rig setup was an exact
duplicate with its own laptop running WriteLog and networked together along with
the email computer. Separate keyboards and displays are used on each computer.
This really challenges the operating position layout, but I managed without
getting any ergonomic injuries during the weekend. FSK was keyed using a
homebrew cable from the laptop to the rig with the level shifting transistors
installed in the RS-232 connector hood. The RX audio chain consisted of a
NIR-12 filter isolated from the decoders with a W2IHY iBox. The Hal DXP38 TNC
was fed in parallel with the sound card line input on the laptop. MMTTY was the
main decoder and did the TX keying. The DXP38 was setup in a "cloned" Rttyrite
window in WriteLog.
During this RU, I noticed a few occassions where the decoding difference between
the DXP38 and MMTTY was dramatic. Most of the time they yield identical results
of course, but a couple times one or the other copied nearly perfect while the
other had nothing recognizable at all. Once case I recall was early Sunday
morning on 40 meters where the JAs were not registering on MMTTY and the DXP38
was spitting out the call signs easily. Normally, I also run 2-3 additional
MMTTY cloned Rttyrite windows, each with a different profile (flutter,
multipath, etc.) in hopes that with marginal copy at least one of them will give
me a hint of what is being received. However, I noticed just before the contest
that any of these open MMTTY windows, including the main one, would lose AGC on
the display which would go into overdrive. I fiddled with all the windows and
could sometimes fix the problem and then have it show up in another one. So, I
fell back to just one MMTTY window for reliability in the contest.
There are three towers here that support:
2-el 40 and 4-el 20 on a common boom
4-el 15 and 4-el 10 on a common boom (with a 4-el 6 several feet above)
C31XR
>From the 20/40 tower are suspended two inverted-V's for 80 and 160. There are
three Beverages: US-west, US-east and Europe. Their biggest benefit is
separating the pileups by region as the US directions effectively null out
Europe and vice versa. An old Ameco pre-amp was used with a simple coax switch
duct-taped to a side table.
Both stations are automatically bandswitched in a typical fashion. A SixPak is
used for antenna switching and a StackMatch can bring in the C31 on the left
radio. ICE 419A bandpass filters and coax stubs provide RFI suppression between
the radios. Linears are the Alpha 86 and 87A.
Thanks to my contest club (NCCC) buddies John, W6LD/P40L, and Andy, AE6Y/P49Y,
for the use of their excellent station here in the pleasant isle of Aruba. They
also took a personal interest in helping me think through some of the
troubleshooting as I configured the station for this contest and then provided
cheerleading for the event. Also, a big thank you to Don, AA5AU, for his
wonderful help and friendship as I learn my my way through the world of RTTY
contesting.
73,
Ed - P49X
QSO/Sta+Prov+Dx by hour and band
Hour 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm OffTime
D1-1800Z - - 57/26 85/30 - 142/56 142/56
D1-1900Z - - 62/9 100/8 - 162/17 304/73
D1-2000Z - - 55/4 95/4 - 150/8 454/81
D1-2100Z - 28/3 94/1 17/1 - 139/5 593/86
D1-2200Z - 56/2 84/4 - - 140/6 733/92
D1-2300Z 18/0 76/2 20/0 - - 114/2 847/94
D2-0000Z 29/0 70/1 --+-- --+-- --+-- 99/1 946/95
D2-0100Z 29/0 68/1 - - - 97/1 1043/96
D2-0200Z 32/0 64/1 - - - 96/1 1139/97
D2-0300Z 39/1 71/0 - - - 110/1 1249/98
D2-0400Z 41/1 52/1 - - - 93/2 1342/100
D2-0500Z 1/0 - - - - 1/0 1343/100 59
D2-0600Z - - - - - 0/0 1343/100 60
D2-0700Z - - - - - 0/0 1343/100 60
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 1343/100 60
D2-0900Z - - - - - 0/0 1343/100 60
D2-1000Z - - - - - 0/0 1343/100 60
D2-1100Z 17/0 61/1 - - - 78/1 1421/101 2
D2-1200Z - 10/0 52/4 - - 62/4 1483/105
D2-1300Z - - 46/2 49/2 - 95/4 1578/109
D2-1400Z - - 52/0 50/2 - 102/2 1680/111
D2-1500Z - - 51/0 50/1 - 101/1 1781/112
D2-1600Z --+-- --+-- 63/1 60/1 --+-- 123/2 1904/114
D2-1700Z - - 58/3 72/0 - 130/3 2034/117
D2-1800Z - - 55/1 56/0 - 111/1 2145/118
D2-1900Z - - 36/0 46/0 - 82/0 2227/118
D2-2000Z - 6/0 45/0 28/1 - 79/1 2306/119
D2-2100Z - 18/0 48/0 - - 66/0 2372/119
D2-2200Z - 34/1 62/1 - - 96/2 2468/121
D2-2300Z - 37/0 35/0 - - 72/0 2540/121
Total: 206/2 651/13 975/56 708/50 0/0
80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
NA 188 511 719 601 0 2019 79.5
EU 15 106 208 94 0 423 16.7
OC 0 0 4 3 0 7 0.3
SA 3 6 9 6 0 24 0.9
AF 0 4 4 3 0 11 0.4
AS 0 24 31 1 0 56 2.2
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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